This is a compilation of handy resources for new local trail runners. It's constantly being updated as I learn more myself.

Who is zoot?

I'm Kim aka Zoot - a derivative of a childhood nickname. This is my web site where I've been blabbering non-stop since 2004. I like to talk about running, parenting, bullet journals, food, and geeky treasures I find on the internet!

Feel free to browse around, leave comments, or just run away screaming. It won't be the first time.

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Month: September 2008

Do you have a stack of yearbooks lying around the house at all? Mine were stashed in a chest in our room and going through them for this entry was one of the first times they’ve been opened since I graduated in 1993. Flipping through them was so much fun, and I even hated large chunks of high school. Still – great memories came flooding back, with the pictures and the words. This stack brought me many smiles tonight.

Even if you don’t have a stack of yearbooks, chances are the yearbooks were there for you to buy in high school. Maybe you opted not to buy them, maybe you lost them. Maybe you bought them and then burnt them in a ceremonial fire to symbolize your hatred for the years they represented. (What? You didn’t at least think about it?) Either way, chances were that there were yearbooks somewhere to be had. Right?

But what if they weren’t? What if there were no yearbooks for your to buy and then lose? Did you know some high schools can’t afford yearbooks? Some kids leave those four years with little-to-nothing to remember them by. While looking for projects to support for the Donor’s Choose Blogger’s Challenge – I found just one of those schools.

When my students see yearbooks from other, more affluent schools they get a little saddened. They don’t quite understand why our school doesn’t feel it necessary to honor the students by having a yearbook…My students need a good SLR digital camera to take photographs to produce a yearbook for the first time in over 10 years!

One digital camera. That’s all they’re asking for. One digital camera for an entire high school here in my home state of Alabama. With that, they’ll have their own yearbook. And we can help them get that. Imagine this…you donate five dollars to help this school get a yearbook. In 15 years, one of those students will sit down to look at that yearbook like I did last night. And 15 years from now, your five dollars lives again. And it will surely live again years after that. Please – visit my donor page and help give these students what I took for granted. What we all probably took for granted. Please?

To reward you, I have several pictures of myself from my own yearbooks to share with you. Shouldn’t every student be able to post an embarrassing entry like this 15 years after they graduate? I think so. Or, if not post a blog entry, every student should at least be able to have these books hidden in a drawer somewhere for their kids to find and laugh at years down the road.

Freshman year. Illegal quantities of hairspray used in this photo.

What? I don’t look like an athlete?

Powderpuff Football. LOVED THAT.

Junior Year. Lighter on the hairspray.

Look! I was a good Catholic once!

Most Dependable. Of course.

Senior Year and An Assortment of Bizarre Information I Don’t Remember

Now, wasn’t that fun? I would not have been able to humiliate myself with such fantastic photos from my high school career if it weren’t for my yearbook. I’m fairly certain you could do a similar entry, unless you were one of those rare timeless good-looking people. In which case, you need to go away before I beat you.

Help these kids get their yearbooks, please? Visit my donor page and help out these kids in my home state. Five dollars. That’s all it takes. And these kids could have their high school fashion choices documented for eternity.

Edited to add: I am going to try to add more challenges to my page throughout the week. I don’t have the readership of some of the other participants so I just chose one project. It has since occurred to me that the point of “Donor’s Choose” is to give you all a choice, so even if there’s just a few of you who donate, you should still have a choice. Duh. I’ll work on that.